Let's all decorate the fake tree

Are you still buying a real Christmas tree? Increasingly, that's becoming an exotic niche purchase for the eccentric shopper.

I don't know anyone on our block who hasn't capitulated to the demonic forces of today's retail market, which are constantly seducing you with siren promises about fake trees.

To wit: That your new artificial tree, made from real genuine petroleum products, will last for decades, no matter how ugly it was when you bought it.

It will now come pre-lighted. This removes one of the major obstacles to real Christmas joy: Having to get the bleeping strings of lights untangled and hung on the bleeping tree before you can do the fun part — hanging ornaments and candy canes.

Beware, though. When one of those new-and-improved Christmas trees blows a fuse, you'll suddenly find yourself with a holiday decoration that has lights that only work on one side. This does not add to aforementioned holiday joy.

I continue to be one of the Luddites who does not want an electronic, oil-based tree made in China. I still want to go purchase a pine-based product grown by farmers in American soil.

If you continue to also have this bizarre pine tree fetish and would like to be cured of it, ask yourself a few simple questions:

Do I really want to go to the tree lot tonight and haul one home, scattering needles everywhere within a five mile radius? How much easier it would be to just get a box out of the garage.

Do I really want to watch the thing die slowly, turn yellow and finally have to be hauled off, scattering even more needles as it goes?

Do I really want to try to remember which exact day in January the city truck will come to haul off the tree?

Do I really want the misery and guilt involved when I forget to leave the tree out on the curb on the right day, and then I'm stuck with a dried-out pine tree for the rest of my life?

Sad but true: One year I missed the tree deadline. I looked out my door a nanosecond too late, only to watch the all-important truck moving off down the street after it passed my curb.

After using a few choice words that my children should not have heard, I had an emotional breakdown and left the dead tree in my back yard for an entire year, until the next tree recycling day came around. There's nothing that says white trash like Christmas trees in July.

Yes, real tree lovers, you might be asking yourselves these questions. On the other hand, you might already have a tree. In which case, I need to ask you a question. When is the optimal time to purchase a real tree?

I tried to rev up my teenagers' interest sufficiently to get a tree last weekend, but they insisted it was too early and it would become nothing but dry tinder by the time St. Nick comes down the fireplace.

When kids are little, a trip to the Christmas tree lot is exciting beyond all reason.

By the time children become teenagers, though, the annual tree hunt interferes with crucial teenage developmental tasks such as staring in the mirror and posting videos on Facebook.

The problem is that as the Christmas season moves into full swing, life becomes ever more frantic and it's as difficult as the Normandy Landing to coordinate such a thing as a trek to get the tree.

I think that NASA might have had an easier time getting the Mars Rover onto the Red Planet than I have getting two teenagers in the car to go select a tree.

"I have track practice," Cheetah Boy announces.

"I'm going over to my friend's house to work on my science project," his sister advises.

"Let's get a tree on Christmas Eve," they both suggest, based on the fact that several times, we've been so busy that a desperate expedition has resulted on Dec. 24 to find the last real tree for sale in America. We always find one, but it's not that easy as the lots are usually torn down and returned to their former status as parking lots.

Even though I like real trees, last year I finally became so frustrated that I went into the garage and grabbed an artificial tree designed to go outdoors, stuck it in the living room, threw a box of lights and ornaments at the kids and said, "Go for it."

This wasn't exactly "It's a Wonderful Life." There was no Zsu-zsu there asking how angels get their wings. There were no jovial crowds belting out Christmas carols to the pounding of an upright piano. There was no Tiny Tim exclaiming, "And God bless us, every one."

By the time you read this, however, I fully intend to have a real, actual, formerly living tree in my home. Smelling delicious and shedding pine needles all over my floor.